ACPAtmospheric Chemistry and PhysicsACPAtmos. Chem. Phys.1680-7324Copernicus GmbHGöttingen, Germany10.5194/acp-7-6047-2007Performance of the meteorological radiation model during the solar eclipse of 29 March 2006PsiloglouB. E.1KambezidisH. D.11Atmospheric Research Team, Institute of Environmental Research and Sustainable Development, National Observatory of Athens, Athens, Greece1012200772360476059This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/7/6047/2007/acp-7-6047-2007.htmlThe full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/7/6047/2007/acp-7-6047-2007.pdf

Various solar broadband models have been developed in the last half of the
20th century. The driving demand has been the estimation of available
solar energy at different locations on earth for various applications. The
motivation for such developments, though, has been the ample lack of solar
radiation measurements at global scale. Therefore, the main goal of such
codes is to generate artificial solar radiation series or calculate the
availability of solar energy at a place.
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One of the broadband models to be developed in the late 80's was the
Meteorological Radiation Model (MRM). The main advantage of MRM over other
similar models was its simplicity in acquiring and using the necessary input
data, i.e. air temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure and
sunshine duration from any of the many meteorological stations.
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The present study describes briefly the various steps (versions) of MRM and
in greater detail the latest version 5. To show the flexibility and great
performance of the MRM, a harsh test of the code under the (almost total)
solar eclipse conditions of 29 March 2006 over Athens was performed and
comparison of its results with real measurements was made. From this hard
comparison it is shown that the MRM can simulate solar radiation during a
solar eclipse event as effectively as on a typical day. Because of the main
interest in solar energy applications about the total radiation component,
MRM focuses on that. For this component, the RMSE and MBE statistical
estimators during this study were found to be 7.64% and &minus;1.67% on 29
March as compared to the respective 5.30% and +2.04% for 28 March.
This efficiency of MRM even during an eclipse makes the model promising for
easy handling of typical situations with even better results.